I am always comparing this year's garden to last, or to the one two years before, or before that even, back to about the third year we lived in this house, everything blooming in its place, perennials, annuals, taller plants in back, the hedge trim behind that, no slugs in the hosta, the small orange sunflowers full of monarchs in late summer—how did it all come to this, the tangle I suggest we turn under, cover with gravel, no heart left for the spreading mint and the insistence of the word I never before allowed to be used: weeds.